Where to find vintage bathroom tile? Follow Jason and Nicky on their epic trip to the West Virginia motherlode & Foamhenge, too!

Remember the story about thethousands of pieces of new-old-stock vintage tile uncovered in storage buildingand marshalled for sale in West Virginia? The weekend after I ran the story, Readers Jason and Nicky jumped in their car and drove 7 hours to check it out. They scored some fabulous vintage tile for their two bathrooms and foyer — a side trip to Foamhenge — and sent us photos and their story. You have to admit: These stories are the bomb!

Jason (above) writes:

Pam,

My wife Nicky and I went to the first tile sale at the old Beaver High School in Bluefield, WV on February 5th after seeing your story on the site. We had initially planned to spend the weekend in New England, but the threat of snow made us change our plans last minute, so we decided on a whim to see if we couldn’t knock out some of our tile needs (and we also wanted to see the Saxon Tangerine tile in person). The school is 7 hours from where we live, so we drove down Friday night and stayed in Lexington, VA (which is still 2 1/2 hours away), got up at around 6 am on Saturday morning and trekked down to Bluefield.

The school itself is impressive and sits on a hill so it can be seen from the main road. The main hall of the school was lined with tile and there was a large room (presumably a lab at one time) that was stock piled with even more tile. We were told that what was there was a fairly accurate representation of what they had, although they still have not finished inventorying all of the tile. Emily and Lawrence were extremely excited to see us, as we had been in contact via email and cell, so everyone that showed up was told that ‘people from Maryland’ had come to buy tile.

We are just diving in to the meatier projects now (bathrooms) and we are still debating the kitchen re-do (I want steel cabinets and my wife wants MDF or wood, although I might be winning that one 😀 ).

All in all we spent about 4 1/2 hours at the school. We got quite a haul — we bought 100 sf of the tangerine tile for our foyer, enough floor tile to do our hall bath, and enough tile to do the walls in our downstairs half-bath. We also purchased some of the Moroccan tile to use as coasters in our 70’s themed living room.

We LOVED the avocado Moroccan sheet tile for our foyer, but the tangerine tile won in the end). We absolutely were torn between the Avocado sheet tile and the tangerine, but ultimately, we decided the saxon tangerine would provide more visually impact. They also had Azrock tiles and Dal-tile sheet flooring which I did not get pictures of. We were on overload. We were trying to find project in which we could use the various tiles. My wife loved the floor tile that looked like stone…we almost left with that as well. 🙂

Also, just to clarify, we didn’t purchase all of the bullnose tile, there was plenty left. Seafoam is one of the colors they don’t have a large assortment of options in, but we found enough to do our half-bath. They did have lavender, a couple of shades of pink, various yellows (including speckled varieties), browns and beiges, 60s avocado (which looks more yellow than 70s), mint green (in plain and speckled variety), gray, white, as well as more contemporary options (i.e. 80s colors such as Platinum and Apricot). They also had a wide variety of ‘Squiggle’ tiles (the white ones with different colored squiggles) in a variety of colors. If I had to factor a guess, the majority of the tile we saw was late 50’s to early 80’s. We actually have a 1980’s comforter that matches the Platinum and Apricot tiles to a tee. Emily and Lawrence indicated they were still inventorying the majority of the older tile still packed in crates, although the pink bullnose was out for sale when we went (they had 2 crates jam packed). Most of the tiles are USA Made, but a fair bit were imported from England, Japan, and Korea. The Japanese tile is more than likely early 60’s, before they switched to electronics (I restored a 1953 Motorola TV and learned a lot about TV history; Motorola sold off its TV division in the early 70’s to a Japanese company, which gave the Japanese a definitive foot in the door in the US Television Manufacturing Industry).

I took some photos of our visit, as there were tiles that were not included in the original post. We kind of divided and conquered with our cameras; my wife tried to capture the mass quantity of the tile and I focused on some of the cool options available. My wife has asked me to apologize for the quality on some of them, as the lighting was not good inside the building.

One thing I should mention is that anyone going to this should bring warm clothing and flashlights. The building is solid brick and plaster and currently does not have heat, water, or power. While we were there, it got into the 40’s outside, but was probably close to 10 degrees cooler inside.

I’ve included a couple of shots of our wall tile plans with the tank of our toilet to show how closely the color matches. The toilet is an American Standard Cadet (as featured on the DEA Bath website) from the late 50’s. We purchased all of the bullnose tile at the sale, as well as the wall tile. The wall tile is from the Cambridge Tile Company, formerly in OhioGuessing by the color, I would say our wall tile is early to mid 80’s, but it goes so well up against the seafoam, we couldn’t resist!

We got a tour of the building, which is undergoing renovation — the proceeds from the tile sale will go to fund a new roof for the building, which has sat vacant since 1982.

I wanted to include one last pic of Foamhenge 🙂 Foamhenge is definitely worth seeing!

My wife worked down in that area for 3 months and insisted on showing me the Natural Bridge area (which also has a ‘natural bridge’ with a roadway over top of it, also worth seeing). We also scoped out is the Fenton glass store (which also sells other Made in the USA glass). They sell it, as well as Fiesta Ware at the WV Welcome Centers as well, since both products are proudly made in WV. We picked up some Vaseline glass salt and pepper shakers that look vintage but are pressed using the old molds. They are made by Mosser Glass, based out of Ohio.

Feel free to use any and/or all of the pictures I’ve sent to you. I apologize if I am coming across a little scattered; this tile sale was truly epic and recapping my thoughts and the experience makes me want to make the 7 hour trek again. I wish I could say I was kidding. 😀

Jason (BlueJay on the site)

Jason and Nicky, you two simply amaze me. Thank you for this fabulous report — and we want to see your tile installations when they are done! That said: The pain, the pain… It is all I can do to jump in my Escape and go down and get me some tile NOW. I wish I could say I was kiddin. 😀

I included both Jason’s photos — and the set from the first post — in the slide show below. To view: Click on any thumbnail to start… it will enlarge… advance via the arrows below the photo… you can start or stop at any location:

How to contact Emily –> Email her at: centraltile@yahoo.com.

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Comments

Can anyone identify that tile that is orange and gray and has the wavy lines in between and the wavy edges? We have something similar in the foyer of our new/old house and keep debating over whether it is ceramic or not.

Ooo, so many tiles, so little space! We demoing a mid-60s half bath to raise the floor and make a full bath. We will salvage as much as we can, but I despaired of finding enough matching tile to make a full bath twice the size. This could work! Aqua and white is what we need.

And that stone tile would be perfect for our kitchen dining area, is it ceramic or vinyl?

And AHHHH! I’m heading back to Detroit from Florida tomorrow and will be going right by Bluefield!

I have been trying to interest my friends and relations into investing in 70’s era houses before they become as trendy as 50’s and early 60’s ones. So far, no takers.
Too bad. Orange was always one of my favorite colors. In the 80’s I had to soften it to peach.

I purchased some of the tile from Emily, and they arrived on Friday. Opening the boxes was like Christmas morning! I have the gold and blue, and the plain orange and orange pattern. And Emily included a sample of a lucsious chocolate brown tile with a white floral design. Gorgeous! It’s a good thing I don’t live close enough to make a road trip to WV! Thanks, Pam, for a wonderful website where we all can share great ideas!

We have the white tile with yellow/gold squiggles in our home we’ll be purchasing soon. At first, I wanted to take it out and redo the tile, but being an eco-conscious designer, I decided to work with it instead since it’s in really great shape (with some tiles with cracks at the base that will need to be replaced) and either paint the walls or put up modern wallpaper to coordinate with it, giving it a more Anthropologie feel to it. I’ve been trying to find replacement tiles on the web with no luck but this place has them! I’ll try to notify the owner and see if I can purchase through the mail or something. It would be so terrific to have all the missing and broken tile replaced with the original! So happy you posted these photos!

Good luck, Ruiz — I am pretty sure the seller is being helpful in doing mail orders. Go to my original story for info on how to contact her. Good on you for recognizing that the first precept of “green” renovations is to keep what you have already! But haha, you make me smile with your “Anthropologie” feel. Could that be: “Vintage / Retro”?